| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: cushioned with rosebud chintz, windows curtained
with the same.
In the little white bed, with a rose-sprinkled cover-
lid over her, lay Content. She was not asleep.
Directly, when the light flashed out, she looked at
the rector and his wife with her clear blue eyes. Her
fair hair, braided neatly and tied with pink ribbons,
lay in two tails on either side of her small, certainly
very good face. Her forehead was beautiful, very
white and full, giving her an expression of candor
which was even noble. Content, little lonely girl
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: MRS. ALLONBY. Horrid word 'health.'
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Silliest word in our language, and one knows so
well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman
galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the
uneatable.
KELVIL. May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of
Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. A much better institution, of course. We in the
House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes
us a civilised body.
KELVIL. Are you serious in putting forward such a view?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: it may be well, at least, to give it expression.
The spirit of Villon is still living in the literature of
France. Fat Peg is oddly of a piece with the work of Zola,
the Goncourts, and the infinitely greater Flaubert; and,
while similar in ugliness, still surpasses them in native
power. The old author, breaking with an ECLAT DE VOIX, out
of his tongue-tied century, has not yet been touched on his
own ground, and still gives us the most vivid and shocking
impression of reality. Even if that were not worth doing at
all, it would be worth doing as well as he has done it; for
the pleasure we take in the author's skill repays us, or at
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